Stupid, but not traitorous

"Why exactly is it that you can't help out with building the bridge?" Tazuna asked as we sat on our various favorite spots which we had discovered through the many hours each of us had spent on guard duty, each far enough from the others that there was no way to catch all of us in a trap.

"There are varied and complicated answers to that question, Tazuna, so you will have to get the answer from each of us individually" I called back from where I rested comfortably on my raft under the bridge with my feet in the sea, enjoying the sun as I kept an eye on the many fuinjutsu scripts designed to monitor the space between each of the support pillars, waiting for one to light up and warn us of an attack from below.

"Fine then, what are you doing that's so important that you can't help out?" he called to Naruto as he sat on a foldable lawn chair in the middle of the already built part of the bridge, Zabuza sitting beside him.

"Sakura said that I'm watching the bridge and, you know, building a bridge sounds boring" Naruto called back before returning to the leftover ramen he packed for lunch.

"Fine then, what about you?" he asked Sasuke

"I'm looking for any signs of the enemy" Sasuke said as he sat on one of the lantern poles, looking out over the sea for any sign of enemies approaching with the water walking jutsu.

Tazuna grumbled something I couldn't hear even with my chakra enhanced senses before leaning over the edge of the bridge to look down at me, making me block the sun with my hand as I looked up at him.

"And you?" he asked.

"While I could say something about how I needed to be here in order to power the seals, I want to be completely honest with you and openly tell you that I really just could give it some power every ten minutes or so and help out with the bridge, but, as Naruto so elegantly put it, building a bridge sounds like a lifestyle so mind-numbingly boring that it would make me more stupid then the materials you build with" I said with a slight smirk in his direction.

"I would normally rush to defend my craft, but you might be right, that still shouldn't prevent you from joining though, after all, there has to be some limit to how numb a mind can get and I'm pretty sure you're there" he said before turning his head to the left.

"What about you, girl?" he asked.

"I'm learning leadership by following you around" she said, although, her intense study in the art of leadership never seemed to keep her from keeping a close eye on anything that approached Tazuna.

Tazuna eventually stopped trying to recruit us for the building effort and returned to commanding his workers, the constant sound of hammers, saws, and grunting continued until lunchtime when, as usual, everyone started to leave to refresh themselves. I whipped the railing and started to drag myself up to the top so we could follow Tazuna as he ate with his workers, at least, that is what would normally happen, but for some reason Tazuna was standing, at the edge of the bridge, inspecting something.

"Come on old man! I'm hungry, you can fix the bridge after we get some food?" Naruto complained as he dragged Zabuza over to where Tazuna, Sasuke and Sakura stood, with everyone but Tazuna impatiently waiting for him to get done inspecting the work of his crew.

Then, at the very moment I crested the railing of the bridge, one of the seals I had set up suddenly activated. It was the one monitoring the unfinished end of the bridge, right below where everyone else were standing.

My eyes widened in surprise at the sudden attack, the sudden awareness of the fact that everyone except me were together in a cluster, and currently making a near-perfect target for Haku's ice-mirror-whatever jutsu.

"Everyone, scatter! There's an intruder from below!" I yelled.

Sasuke reacted immediately, grabbing Tazuna by the back of his shirt and throwing him in my direction just as Haku launched over the edge of the unfinished skeleton of the bridge with Zabuza's giant sword on his back and finished a series of hand seals, engulfing the rest of my team and Zabuza in a dome of ice mirrors.

"what's happening?" Tazuna asked frantically.

"The attack we have been expecting for so long has finally come, and to be completely honest it was perfect moment for it to come, it might just be the best way to develop an appetite for lunch after a day full of sitting around and looking at some ink splatters on a wall" I said with a smile as I inspected the dome, which, annoyingly, looked slightly different from what I remembered. It looked more like the top half of a hundred-sided dice with no openings to speak of, preventing me from knowing anything about what was going on inside.

"What are we going to do? How can we help?" Tazuna asked, looking scared yet determined to help if he could.

"Well that depends on your definition of 'we' since I will be trying my best to help in any way I can while you'll hopefully run as far away as possible while neither of our enemies have any way of knowing where you run off to" I said.

"But shouldn't I help somehow? You kids were never supposed to take this mission, you're only in this mess because I lied" he asked, clearly reluctant to leave us with a problem he created.

"Based on my experience with involving civilians in Shinobi affairs I would recommend the opposite, after all, even if this fight won't be quite at the level of Kakashi and Zabuza's fight it will still be suicide for you to start throwing around punches" I said

Tazuna looked at the dome of ice hesitantly for a moment where I started to worry that he would actually try something before shaking his head and running away. After he ran, I stood in indecision for a couple of moments, it was up to me to figure out a way inside and help them, but all my tools were meant to be used very specifically on people, not chakra constructs. But I had to do something, so I ran to the dome of ice as fast as my feet could carry me, I grabbed a vail of ink and a brush from my pack and started to draw a fuinjutsu script right at the edge of the dome, I made an upgraded explosion seal with a circular design, then a small barrier seal at with the shape of a crescent moon around it so the explosion would be directed at the dome, finally finishing it after five minutes of frantic doodling with an activation point opposite to the dome.

[directed explosion seal

Tier: C

A powerful explosion directed in one direction, perfect for pinpoint damage, at least, as pinpoint as an explosion gets

Cost: 1000 chakra]

I grimaced at the large cost on my already chakra poll after using it to power the detection seals for so long, it wouldn't be ideal for my heroic charge to protect my friends ended with death by chakra exhaustion, but there was nothing that could be done, I guess.

"Clear out if you can hear me!" I yelled, hoping to avoid hitting my friends with the blast, then, I paid the cost to activate the seal.

The barrier activated first, and a second later the bridge shook with the force of the blast, the instantaneous bloom om orange and yellow light from the explosion shattered the dome of ice causing a hole with the diameter of Zabuza's sword to appear.

When I looked through the hole, I created I saw a scene only slightly better than the worst-case scenario. The entire team looked as if they had decided to make a bet on who could have more senbon stuck in them without dying, and like they were all about to lose that bet. Then there was the problem of the very huge and very deadly assassin standing with the very, very large sword nearby them. The only reason that it wasn't a true worst-case scenario was that Zabuza was, in fact, still chained up like a half-finished mummy and holding his sword in his mouth. Of course, something as poultry as being unable to walk wasn't going to stop him, a fact he eloquently demonstrated by doing an upside-down spin jump at my friends, thus managing to almost cut all of them in half.

Then, he turned to look directly at me.

"Ups! Sorry about that, silly me, I didn't realize that I knocked on the wrong door, please, go back to what you were doing before, I'll just be on my way" I said while slowly backing away from the hole.

Zabuza spat his sword out of his mouth, only for it to get caught by Haku as he shot out from one of the mirrors. "What a surprise, I was just about to kill your friend's then hunt you down, we can't let your team escape after all, but then you come and make a perfect exit, letting me leave your friends to be killed by Haku"

"That sounds like a great time! I have been wanting to spend more quality time with my best friend Zabuza, what secret do you want to discover together today?" I said with a nervous smile as I backed towards the railing, whips in hand.

Zabuza grabbed his blade with his mouth and prepared to jump towards me, I immediately turned and sprinted to the railing, jumping over the edge while turning back, only to see Zabuza flying towards me at the speed of a train. My eyes widened as I realized that if I didn't do anything we would collide in seconds. I whipped the arch between two of the coulombs and dragged myself back towards the bridge as fast as possible, going just beneath Zabuza as he tried to reposition his sword to cut me in half from head to toe, luckily for me, repositioning isn't the strong suit of the mouth grip.

"I take it you want to discover the secret behind the murder of Anno?" I called back as I hid behind a coulomb.

There was no response from Zabuza, clearly, he was more experienced than the chunin I ki- fought, back in Kiri. Suddenly, the quiet rattle of chains started to come towards me, becoming louder and louder until I realized that it was the sound of Zabuza flying through the air in my direction. I whipped myself to the bottom of the bridge and pulled myself to stand there as fast as possible, only to look back and see Zabuza fly by the coulomb I was hiding behind, his sword slicing straight through it, and if I had reacted even a moment later, through me.

Thus began a game of frantic cat and mouse, with me swinging around the coulombs in a mad scramble to avoid getting cut in half, kept alive by the fact that the detection seals were still running, and Zabuza, annoyed by his restraints, trying to catch me by jumping between the coulombs, the water, and the bottom of the bridge. It was going quite well, but I was already low on chakra when the fight began, and it was only a matter of time before I ran out, I needed to find a way to end this fight, but Kakashi was the only one who stood any chance of defeating Zabuza, but Kakashi wasn't here... or was he? Haku must have some way of restraining Kakashi, but Haku doesn't have a way of knowing whether or not Kakashi could escape, so Haku would need to keep him close by in order to ensure he could arrive to knock Kakashi unconscious before he got out. But where? Then, my eyes drifted to the only place with a solid surface other than the bridge a person could lie on. My raft. And that was indeed where Kakashi was placed before Haku attacked, tied up and looking like a corpse, with only the senbon in the back of his neck to show that he was actually in a coma.

I immediately made a run for the raft in a desperate attempt to wake up our only hope for survival, however, the second Zabuza saw me going for the raft he Immediately went there, arriving before I did even in chains.

"Hey, Zabuza, so Naruto told be earlier that you thought of Kakashi as a worthy opponent, so really, wouldn't It be more fun to let me release him and then you two can fight?" I called to him as I flew through the air.

an idea started taking shape in my mind, it wouldn't be fun, it would definitely be stupid, bordering on suicidal, but it was the best chance for survival, for all of us. Oh well, if I didn't follow this hair-brained plan of mine we'd all die either way, so I kept dodging, by thinner and thinner margins as I slowly depleted my chakra by constantly activating my whips.

until finally, driven to both physical and chakra exhaustion by my ongoing flight from Zabuza, I slipped up.

Zabuza slammed feet first into my stomach at full speed making me fold in half around his feet due to the sheer force the highspeed dropkick delivered, breaking my ribs before an excruciating flight through the air culminating with slamming my back into one of the coulombs.

"You never stood a chance, you are nothing but a useless tool, and a useless tool is more likely to hut everyone around it, all you need to do as a tool is follow orders, then you won't hurt those around you" he said around the sword in his mouth as he held it to my neck, ready to jerk his head to the side and cut off mine.

"Wait wait wait! How about this, I take your chains off and you let me run away?" I asked in desperation

A long moment went by as Zabuza narrowed his eyes at me in distain, before nodding his head "fine"

I reached out with my gloved hand and touched his angle and the chains on it, deactivating the seal and watched as Zabuza's muscles bulged and the weakest link of the chain snapped, breaking easily under his strength now that he no longer had to break them all at the same time.

"You truly are the worst tool I could imagine, not just reckless and disobedient, but also traitorous, no wonder you have failed every time you tried to achieve anything, and stupid too if you honestly thought I would let you go" he said, more clearly than before after finally taking his sword in hand, then preparing to decapitate me with a single swing.

"You see, that's the thing, while I am stupid reckless and disobedient, the one thing you said about me which wasn't true, was traitorous... mostly, I did commit slight treason" I coughed out, before smirking confidently at him as I activated my glove and watched as Zabuza flew through the air away from me as if he was getting pulled away by the angle at an extreme speed.

[Gloves of bone grasping

Tier: B

When the needles at the tip of each finger comes into contact with bone, they apply an anchor seal to that bone, allowing the user to push and pull on that bone with force equal to the amount of chakra used, if enough chakra is applied, the user is even able rip bones directly from the opponent's body.

It also has storage seals on the finger pads

Cost: variable]

Zabuza slashed at me in a last attempt to kill me, predictably he failed... he did cut off my left leg at the shin, though.

Red hot anguish flowed from the stump of my leg as Zabuza flew away from me, the blood spraying from the many cut arteries fell into the ocean as a scream of pain ripped through my body before I finally released it from my throat in an ear-piercing scream.

But I still had a job to do.

I used my whip to clumsily swing over to my raft through the pain, accidentally landing on the bleeding stump of flesh and bone where my leg used to be, causing another scream of anguish to rip my throat raw, as I used the kunai I had taken from the Chunin I fought to cut the ropes binding Kakashi and pulling the senbon from his neck with my shaking hand as carefully as possible, desperately hoping that my hand wouldn't twitch in pain and accidentally kill our only hope for survival.

Finally, the senbon was pulled from the back of his neck, and I keeled over next to him in relief. My part was done, there was nothing I could do now. Darkness slowly consumed my vision as Kakashi groaned next to me.